Slow Travel Berlin

The Chills

SLOW TRAVEL BERLINThe Chills, Lido, 9pm

Starting in the mid-1980s, jangle pop was a new genre of music that developed out of the post-punk scene in the US. But it refused to remain exclusive to North America, and various bands in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand adopted the genre for their own purposes.

The latter country’s spinoff, the Dunedin Sound, is so named because of the second-largest city of the southern island, Dunedin. A university town, it gave birth to a disproportionate amount of musicians, a handful of which went on to be some of the better-known bands in all of New Zealand.

Among these luminaries is The Chills, a band formed by Martin Phillips and made famous by 1984′s “Pink Frost.” Later, the group went on to release four full-lengths, four compilations, and three EPS—almost all of which were put out on New Zealand’s legendary Flying Nun Records.

However, The Chills were not technically together for all these years, with what could be considered either a break-up or hiatus in the mid-90s, in addition to a high turnover in membership throughout the years (see: “the curse of The Chills”). Yet after close to a decade of near-radio silence, Phillips released a mini-album in 2004, followed by a brand new single in the summer of 2013. Now, the group is on tour, and will play Berlin for the first time since 1987. Not to be missed. Natalye Childress